Devan Wanders

Listen to me wander.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Who killed the electric car?

Keep your eyes peeled for Who Killed the Electric Car in theaters this summer. I worked for the director, Chris Paine, in Santa Monica back in '95-'97. He was the first person I knew with an electric car, the EV1. The car was very cool. It was fast, good looking, and best of all it didn't run on gas. Around the same time we even started seeing local supermarkets offer rockstar parking and free charging for your electric car while you shopped. It seemed like the way things were going.

But as some of you may know California extended its deadline for low emission cars in 1996. With the requirements to put electric cars on the road delayed not only did manufacturers stop making them, but they recalled the ones they were leasing and destroyed them.

Unfortunately I missed the early screening of this movie in SF due to the birth of my baby girl, but I'm anxiously awaiting it to come to my local theater. Chris was interviewed on PBS' NOW recently. I missed it's airing, but have found the clip below. Check it out...

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Not everyone has an iPod

Dave Winer is expressing frustration with learning how to use the controls on his new Sandisk mp3 player because it doesn't work like an iPod. I hear what he's saying, but think its also important to realize that not everyone has had an iPod. For example, I'm on my 5th mp3 player and none of them have been iPods. Why? Because in my opinion the iPod has always been one step behind.

Personally I've mostly owned Rios. It was 1998 when I bought my first compact flash based mp3 player called the Rio PMP300. I still have it around in a box somewhere. It only had 32MB of internal memory (I added 32MB to the expansion slot), but was one of the first of its kind and pretty cool at the time.

After about a year I got pretty sick of moving music on and off of the PMP300 and heard about the Rio Riot. This player had a 20GB internal hard drive. Although it was much bulkier than the iPod, I didn't have much choice because the iPod wasn't introduced for another year or so. It did have a built in FM radio, which I used occasionally when I was sick of listening to my mp3s.

In 2003 I replaced that with another 20GB HD based player from Rio called the Karma. Not only was this smaller than the Riot with all the same features, but it also had a slick docking station with Ethernet and RCA connections. With the Karma in its dock I could listen to my mp3s through my stereo system or any machine on my home network. Not only was the Karma cheaper than the equivalent iPod, but with the FM tuner and spiffy docking station it had more features included in the box. However, I must admit that by this time the iPod was considered cooler and had a smaller profile than the Karma.

In 2004 I replaced my Karma with an Archos Gmini 400. This is also a 20GB HD based player. However, it has a color screen, an internal microphone with audio recording capabilities, supports OGG, FLAC, MP3, WAV, and plays some pretty cool little video games. I got an add-on stereo microphone and in-line remote control with an FM radio for about another $100. While this put its price up with that of a larger capacity iPod at the time, I got the Gmini because of its audio recording capabilities. I've recorded a number of podcasts on the device which are available on this feed.

Last year I bought an iRiver which I've mainly used for soundseeing tours. It has an internal microphone, FM tuner, and is really small. However, I don't use this much because it only has 1GB capacity and the interface is not great for browsing large music collections.

I should also note that I bought my Mom an iPod for her 60th birthday in 2004. I helped her get it setup and found it to be very counterintuitive and difficult to operate given my non-iPod experience. So I guess I know where Dave's coming from, but just from a different angle.

Reading Dave's post about not knowing how to fast-forward to minute 23 of a podcast, my first reaction was...push and hold the forward button like every other device. Then I remembered the funky scroll wheel action of the iPod and realized what he was trying to do. That's too bad because every other device (DVD player, CD player, tape deck, etc.) uses the same fast-forward concept that every mp3 player I've ever had implements. Those that have been using nothing but iPods have been retrained and as Dave puts it, "locked in" to Apple's control scheme. This was likely part of Apple's intent. Not only did they come up with an innovative way of controlling audio media, but by retraining their users they've locked them into using iPods and forever asking "Why can't they just adopt the conventions of an iPod?" Pretty sneaky.